The Side of the Angels

by Christina Bartolomeo

  The Side of the Angels

  ~ A NOVEL ~

  CHRISTINA BARTOLOMEO

  Kyoko Watanabe

  SCRIBNER

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  ALSO BY CHRISTINA BARTOLOMEO

  Cupid and Diana

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,

  and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or

  are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales

  or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2002 by Christina Bartolomeo

  All rights reserved, including the right of

  reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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  Designed by Kyoko Watanabe

  Text set in Goudy

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bartolomeo, Christina.

  The side of the angels : a novel / Christina Bartolomeo.

  p. cm.

  1. Women public relations personnel—Fiction.

  2. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction.

  3. Catholic women—Fiction.

  4. Single women—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3552.A7677 S53 2002

  813′.54—dc21 2001057709

  ISBN 0-7432-0461-1

  ISBN: 978-0-7432-0461-3

  eISBN: 978-1-4391-3164-0

  To my darling buddy Dan,

  who gives me laughter, courage, and love

  Acknowledgments

  This book was fortunate to have two wonderful editors. Jane Rosen-man vastly improved the first versions with characteristic kindness and wisdom, and an unerring eye for where it needed to go next. Jake Morrissey shepherded it through successive drafts and publication, giving generously of his time and expertise to a manuscript that he “met” midway through development. Thank you both, more than I can say. Warm thanks also to Rachel Sussman of Scribner, for guiding this book through final production and giving her time and talent generously to its promotion.

  Thanks always to my agent, Henry Dunow, for his encouragement, support, and friendship. As agent and fellow author, he truly understands the highs and lows of the business of writing and has seen me through all of them. Much gratitude to Lucy Stille of Paradigm, for past miracles and for her enthusiasm for this book, and to Ethan Friedman of Scribner, who gave me a crucial character, and was always there to reassure. For another gorgeous jacket, many thanks to designer and illustrator Honi Werner, as well as Kyoko Watanabe for a lovely text design. And, for stepping in to get this book through its finishing touches, many thanks to Brant Rumble.

  For their camaraderie and advice, my thanks to writers Karl Ack-erman, Angela Nicholas, Leigh Bailey, Larry Doyle, Timothy Murphy, Elinor Lipman, and Mary Quattlebaum. Special thanks for the stellar teaching of Richard Bausch. For getting me through this book and so much else, love and thanks to Susan Lieberman, Sarah Bulley, Roy Raymond, and my D.C. Tuesday night and Maine Wednesday night therapy groups.

  Thanks and affection forever to my former colleagues at the American Federation of Teachers. For teaching me all I know about union organizing, special thanks to: Tom Flood, Jerry Richardson, Norm Holsinger, Rick Kuplinski, Juanita Dunlap-Smith, Don Kuehn, Pat Jones, Tom Moran, Ann Twomey, Candice Owley, Ray Mackey, Marty Keegan, Rich Klimmer, Bob Jensen, and Chuck Iannello.

  For their great goodness to me during my time in New England and after, my heartfelt thanks and love to Denis and Noreen Murphy; warm thanks also to Jean Foley and Bonnie Spiegel.

  I am blessed to count among my friends: Laura Baker, Jason Juffras, Christopher and Christy David, Kate Bannan, Mike Long, Vandana Reddy, Jared Schwartz, Kate Innes, Danielle Oddo, Kate Callison, Andrew Young, Sam Wang, Peter Darling, Jon Givner, Shannon and Michael Spaeder, Mary Jones, Sylvia Mapes, Carol Goodman, Kathy Dillon, and Peter Leopold. Marybeth Kelly Evans and Ivan Klein have died since this book was begun but I will never forget them or their belief in me. Matt Jacob and Jeff Campbell have been there for every joy and sorrow, the truest friends in the world.

  Deepest love and gratitude to my family: my mother and father, John and Dorothy Bartolomeo, my loyal and loving sisters and brothers (Mary, Anna, Angela, Nick, and John) my terrific sister, brothers-, and niece-in-law (Phil, Eddie, Annie, and Kate), and my darling nephews John, Brendan, Cristian, and Samuel. Love and thanks to our extended family, especially Mary and John Heneghan, Gary Lattimore, John Schlecty, Kim Christiansen, Andy Lee, and Leta Davis. Special thanks to my nephew Devin, no mean writer himself, who read this book in manuscript and rooted for it all along the way. I love you all so much.

  The Side

  of the Angels

  1

  MY COUSIN LOUISE and I ate lunch together twice a month at her office, no fail. That’s what we were doing the first Wednesday in November when my boss’s call came, the one that threw Tony and me, if not back into each other’s arms, into each other’s orbit. Don’t you love it when life suddenly behaves like a movie? There we were, Louise and I, speaking of a man I’d just left—not Tony, another man—and I was on the verge of remarking to Louise, “At least I’m not the mess I was after Tony,” when the phone rang.

  Tony was my old flame, the man who got away. The man whose getting away had so thrown me off my game that I’d fallen into a series of stupid romances, the most recent of which was a three-year-long involvement with Jeremy, a self-enamored British expatriate who’d been cheating on me for six months before I discovered it and kicked him out on his tweedy, two-timing ass.

  “The thing about Jeremy,” Louise had commented a little earlier as she laid out some pink linen napkins and secondhand china (Louise likes to beautify even a weekday lunch), “is that he’s the kind of man who’s never happy unless he’s exercising his talent for persuasion. Which makes a day-to-day relationship difficult, unless you have some strange arrangement where you pretend you’re dumping him every other week, or you wear different wigs to bed, or costumes.”

  “I would say I was playful in bed,” I said defensively. “I read articles and stuff. Once in a while.”

  “I’m not faulting you, Nicky. You could dress up in a lion tamer’s outfit one night and a French maid’s the next and it wouldn’t be enough for Jeremy.”

  Louise had never liked Jeremy. Suave, educated, well-spoken types held no charm for her. She preferred her men artistic, tortured, and generally unbathed. Though perhaps she discouraged Jeremy’s potential reemergence because she wanted to try her hand at digging up prospects for me. Louise is a professional matchmaker, a harebrained occupation at which she’s surprisingly successful. She’d always wanted a shot at seeing what she could do for me. Like a temperance worker with a tippler in the family, she was frustrated that her dedication and devotion to the cause were of no use to her own kin.

  “My trouble is, Louise, I can never spot Jeremy’s kind until he’s stomped on my feelings so badly I don’t want him anymore.”

  “Which, of course, makes him come after you with renewed interest. Look at how he’s acting now, like
you’re the Holy Grail. Where was all that appreciation these past three years?”

  Jeremy had been doing his best—his persuasive, most grandly romantic best—to get me to give him a second chance. I’d dumped him in July. Needless to say, time had not yet dulled the wound.

  Louise’s phone rang. We let the machine pick it up—she still has one of those old-fashioned manual answering machines, now considered as primitive as long-playing records.

  “Nicky,” came Ron’s voice through the static, “I know you said not to bother you, but this is important. Call me.”

  It was always important. Ron liked to pretend he lived in an atmosphere of crisis. He was an ardent fan of those medical dramas where the doctor races through the hospital corridor shouting angrily, “Get me a CBC on that kid, stat.” Ron wished with all his meager, little heart that he could someday say “Stat.” Unfortunately, there wasn’t much call for that sort of thing when you headed a second-rate PR firm that specialized in hopeless causes. Not only was Ron’s firm second-rate, so was his taste in names. He had christened his business “Advocacy, Inc.” despite all my persuasions. I cringed whenever I glanced at our letterhead.

  Ron clicked off. Then the phone rang again. If Ron applied only half the single-minded devotion to his clueless, charity-bent clients that he did to getting his own way, how much better off the widow, orphan, and unspayed house pet would be.

  “Just ignore it,” I said to Louise.

  “Nicky, if you’re there having lunch with Louise, and I know you are because you told Myrlene that was where you were going, please pick up. It really is important. I mean it. I’m sincere. Please pick up.”

  This was a man whose last honest emotion was when he cried at the baptismal font.

  “Shouldn’t you call him?” said Louise. “Maybe it’s some sort of personal problem.”

  Louise is good in ways I’ll never be. Serene and unflustered, Louise manages to be lovable despite the fact that she floats down the river of life as if on a golden barge.

  Nine months younger than I am, my cousin Louise has been at hand for nearly every major event of my life, from my first Communion to my first pregnancy scare. She is my sounding board, my reference point, my unshakable ally. When we were teenagers and nearly every other girl I knew was cruel or unapproachable, Louise was my friend. Because of her, I had survived four years in one of the meanest, snootiest convent schools on the East Coast, the St. Madeleine Sophie Academy for Young Women. Our parents had scraped and saved to send us there; the parents of the other girls considered themselves deprived if they didn’t fit in a second trip to Europe every year. We were made to feel this difference. But, because of Louise, the petty hurts inflicted year after year, the sly daily nastiness that adolescent girls are such experts at, hadn’t done lasting harm.

  Louise got there a year after me, being younger, and a month into her first semester my cousin’s uncrushably lighthearted presence transformed the place, for me, from a daily incarceration stretching endlessly before me into a temporary stint, a launching pad, a joke. I’d not only survived high school, I’d largely forgotten it—because Louise was there too, looking out for me in her unobtrusive way.

  Lest she sound too good to be true, Louise is also impractical, maddeningly slow to put any plan of her own into action (though she’s usually sure of what I should do), and chronically, outrageously late, to the extent that I always bring a book when I go to meet her in a restaurant. Most annoyingly, Louise spends much of her time in a bright mist of hazy, optimistic pseudo-spiritualism. There are few side roads on the journey to enlightenment that she hasn’t explored—group therapy, tai chi, vegan purification diets, past-life regression—and it gets on my nerves sometimes. It’s one thing to keep an open mind. It’s another to seriously consider joining your local witches’ coven.

  The phone rang again. I threw down my forkful of chicken in tarragon mayonnaise (there is an excellent gourmet shop around the corner from Louise’s business) and snatched up the receiver.

  “Ron, I specifically told Myrlene to tell you not to bother me. For one hour. One lousy hour.”

  “I know, but we’ve got a problem,” said Ron’s mellifluous voice. In his college days, Ron earned extra money as a radio announcer.

  “What problem?” I injected some controlled fury into my voice. Ron is like a dog—he responds to tones more than actual words. “This better not be that Mallard Pond thing again. That’s your baby.”

  Three years ago I would never have used a phrase like “that’s your baby,” but you can’t touch pitch and not be defiled, I guess. I only hoped that Ron’s effect on my moral fiber was less insidious than his effect on my vocabulary. It wasn’t as if I’d been overburdened with moral fiber to start with.

  The Mallard Pond account was more trouble than it was worth.

  Mallard Pond was a tiny, algae-filmed lake near a planned community in northern Virginia, a spot that had been farmland when I was growing up. The Mallard Gardens Homeowners Association had hired Advocacy to get some press attention for their fight to save this pristine if not particularly scenic body of water from rapacious developers. The homeowners, I suspected, were more concerned that the arrival of video rental emporiums and movie cineplexes would lower property values than they were about preserving nature’s beauties. Their aim was noble enough for our standards, though. Our standards were not high.

  I’d warned Ron that this account would require a level of client coddling out of all proportion to the money we’d see from it. Did he listen? Of course not. I can count on one hand the number of times my opinion has influenced Ron’s behavior.

  “Not to worry, Mallard’s under control,” said Ron. “The Loudon County Observer just came out on our side. ‘Save Our Southern Walden.’ That was the title of the editorial. My idea.”

  “Great, Ron. Now go visit a library and see if you can find out whether General Lee ever recorded in a letter home that he let his horse, Traveler, bend and drink from Mallard’s cooling waters. Then we’d be home free.”

  “What?”

  It was possible that Ron had never heard of General Lee. He was from Minnesota, where history seemed to be measured in droughts and blizzards. He probably thought Pickett’s Charge was a new kind of credit card.

  “If it’s not Mallard, then what is so damn important?”

  “This is for the Toilers Union,” Ron said. “A nurses’ strike in some blue-collar town in Rhode Island called Winsack. It’s about twenty miles northeast of Providence. The nurses there have been in contract negotiations for twenty-one months and the hospital’s not budging, so they’re close to walking. I told Weingould we’d be over at two o’clock. Myrlene can clear your calendar.”

  A strike. There went all my free time until Thanksgiving, perhaps until Christmas. The only bright spot was that taking this assignment would give me an unimpeachable excuse to refuse Louise the request she’d been leading up to when Ron interrupted.

  “Ron, what am I supposed to tell Janet Stratton-Smith about the planning meeting for the Campsters Christmas gala?”

  “Wendy can meet with her.”

  Wendy was my assistant, an exhaustingly perky twenty-five-year-old whom Ron had hired as a favor to his tax accountant, whose niece she was. Ron owed his firstborn child to his tax accountant, for reasons I preferred not to think about.

  “Janet won’t like that.”

  “Wendy can smooth her down. She’s good at that. Tactful. Sweet. Unlike some people.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you in Weingould’s office at two. Who’s he got on the ground there?”

  “A guy named Tony Boltanski. You know him?”

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. No one I knew, except Louise and my mother, had mentioned Tony’s name to me for five years. Most of my friends knew that I liked to pretend that Tony had been lost at sea in a tragic marine archaeology expedition, or been blown up in a foolhardy but courageous attempt to crack a Columbian drug ring. Anything rather than the knowl
edge that he’d gotten over me, that he was out there doing the job he’d always done, the job he’d preferred to me by such a large margin. I was not the sort of generous soul who bids her lovers good-bye with earnest wishes for a happy life, a wistful, philosophic smile, and “What I Did for Love” playing softly in the background. I wanted them all to suffer.

  “Tony Boltanski? I knew him a long time ago. A campaign in New York. He’s capable.”

  “Better than capable, according to Weingould.”

  Tony and I had lived together for a year and a half. I’d thought I was going to marry him. With Tony, for the first time in my life I’d felt I was home safe. More fool me.

  “Could you meet me in the lobby at a quarter of to discuss strategy?”

  “Don’t push it, Ron.”

  He clicked off. He knows that note of finality in my voice.

  “I have twenty minutes,” I said to Louise.

  “You’re going on assignment?”

  “Yeah. Rhode Island. I hear it’s lovely there this time of year.”

  “And Tony’s involved?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  She pushed a plate of warm pecan brownies to my side of the table. My favorite. I began to gobble, though I knew Louise had provided this delicacy specifically to soften me up for the pitch she was about to make: namely, that it was time I availed myself of her services, as it seemed that every other desperate single person in the Washington metropolitan area was doing. Her company, Custom Hitches, sole proprietor Louise Geary, stood ready to cure my solitary state. This pitch, which had never had much of a chance, was doomed to failure the moment I heard Tony Boltanski’s name for the first time in five years.

  Damn Ron. Leave it to him to put together the perfect combina-tion: working with an old lover from whom I’d parted bitterly, for Weingould, the compulsive looker-over-the-shoulder, on a strike that already sounded more like a siege than a winnable campaign, up north, as winter started. Faced with this cheerful prospect, I was in no mood for Louise’s canned lecture about how the Universe held a mate for each of us if we would just make room for love in our lives.